Journal of Psychiatry

Abstract

Narrations of Personality Disorders in a Famous Chinese Novel of the Eighteenth Century - A Dream of Red Mansions

Hongying Fan, Wanzhen Chen, Chanchan Shen, Yanhua Qin, Junpeng Zhu, You Xu, Qianqian Gao and Wei Wang

Background: Traditional Chinese culture, such as the paternalism, male dominance and collectivism, contribute to normal and disordered personality traits, and the influence might be traced back to an ancient epoch. As a compendium of Chinese culture, the novel, A Dream of Red Mansions (up to first 80 chapters) written in the 18th century, might be a vector of these traces.
Methods: We selected and voted on the personality-descriptive terms (adjective)/phrases, and sentences/ paragraphs in the novel, and compared them with the dimensional classification criteria of Section III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder-Version 5.
Results: Some characters in the novel, Jia Baoyu, Wang Xifeng, Lin Daiyu, Xue Baochai, Xue Pan, Jia Yucun, Concubine Zhao, Jia Rui, Miaoyu, and Jia Jing, with their impairments in personality functioning and pathological traits, might be diagnosed as antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, or schizotypal personality disorder, or a trait-specified. In each character, the personality disorders or traits had their family, societal and religious (Taoism or Buddhism) connections.
Conclusion: Our study indicates that Chinese culture has contributed to personality disorders or traits at least from 18th century on, and has disclosed the disadvantages of Taoism, Buddhism, and hierarchy, male dominance and collectivism under the influence of Confucianism in the development of personality disorder. Our findings might provide treatment hints for personality disorders at the root of culture, for patients in China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and other neighboring countries in Asia, who have been emerged from the Chinese culture.